


oh (so it's like that)

by shortitude



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Friends to lovers (implied), Friendship/Love, Hurt/Comfort, Raven is very hard on herself, hints at PTSD, hints at depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-29
Updated: 2016-07-29
Packaged: 2018-07-27 11:38:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7616566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shortitude/pseuds/shortitude
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She thinks he should know by now that she’s not the easiest person to live with. She’s abrasive and stubborn, and since Mount Weather, she is cold cold cold. Distant, not the Raven they remember. (She wonders, what Raven do they remember? How many people actually bothered to get to know her, before they needed her to save their asses multiple times?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	oh (so it's like that)

**Author's Note:**

> **and the prompt was** : Raven and Bellamy reconcile after a disagreement.

She thinks he should know by now that she’s not the easiest person to live with. She’s a bitch, she’s heard it before (people saying it in hushed whispers that they think won’t reach her fearsome ears) often enough that even she’s ended up believing it. She’s abrasive and stubborn, and since Mount Weather, she is cold _cold cold_. Distant, not the Raven they remember. (She wonders, what Raven _do_  they remember? How many people actually bothered to get to know her, before they needed her to save their asses multiple times?)

What she doesn’t understand is why he’d want to share a bunk with _her_ , and not someone else. There are plenty of other fish in the sea, some of those fish probably feeling more inclined to _smiling_ , and being happy. After all, they’re alive! They’re alive and in one piece, they should be glad, right? Even if Raven’s piece has missing pieces, even if she wakes up with gritted teeth, so hard that her jaw hurts by now on a constant basis, even if she has lost Finn and gotten semi-almost-dumped. (It goes like this: Wick thinks that after he carries her from Mount Weather, she’ll not only stop pushing him away, but be glad he’s there. He’s wrong. He doesn’t stay. He never really loved her like Raven wanted to be loved, either, and she doesn’t know how to compromise for less anymore.) And yeah, she should be happy she’s alive, right? 

Well, she is. But it doesn’t make her great company literally any other moment of the day. She thinks Bellamy’s an idiot when the Council decides to suggest group bunking as a means of combating the dark and cold, lonely winter, and Bellamy comes into her tent and asks her quietly if she has a bunk mate. 

“I’m not exactly the sunniest person to sleep with,” she points out to him then, as a warning, which he doesn’t take because he moves in that night. Two single beds, one on each wall. (He keeps her awake reading with the lights on one night so she builds him a reading lamp. He gives Monroe his spare blanket when she falls sick, so Raven builds their room a portable heating device that he drags into her workshop every night.) 

It’s not like it’s not peaceful cohabitation. They adapt to each other’s abrasiveness, because _oh there’s some of that to go around_ , and keep quiet most often than not. There’s that one night, sometime mid-January, when Bellamy comes home (hah, what a joke she is, calling it that) smelling like he sampled Monty’s first batch of hooch, when he tells her that he feels warm and ends up telling her the tale of Prometheus, who gave the fire to the humans, and he laughs when she asks him if Monty’s Prometheus in this one, and she likes his laugh, she likes it so much. After that one time, she starts poking him for stories here and there, and he gives in easily, even when he mumbles them tiredly and ends up falling asleep with his face pressed into the pillow made out of his jacket halfway through. (She teases him: it’s not the story-teller who’s supposed to fall asleep first.) 

There is that one elephant in the room, that comes back to haunt - it seems - only her, on the other hand. She remembers how it felt when he picked her up and she could still wrap her legs around his waist. She remembers how it felt when he swept her hair aside and kissed her neck so gently, like he was surprised he even _could._  She remembers his breath against her heated skin, remembers his fingers grasping for her desperately, remembers thinking he needed her more than she needed him, and feeling vile for using him. She remembers her bitter regret with bitter regret, but she remembers his actions with the hunger of a beast starved for long, winter months. 

Not that it matters. 

They’re friends. It’s not an unsteady thing, it’s hot hesitant. They are the most solid friends in Camp, as unlikely a pair as they can be. They have their entwined history, linking them together, and their inner-circle jokes, and the small non-verbal gestures that comfort each other, and they are _friends_. 

So when they fight, it’s all Raven’s fault, but he should’ve known she’s not the easiest person to live with. It turns out, no matter how many months they spend in the same room, trading stories and gadgets, keeping each other warm with company and friendship alone, she’s still just a piece missing some of its pieces. Patience is one, and one day she loses it with Bellamy and snaps at him. 

(The why is confusing, but has something to do with jealousy that she won’t name. The how is shameful; she throws ugly words in his face and he grits his jaw and leaves the room. She doesn’t see him for hours.) 

It’s his fault, though. 

It’s her fault only. 

So, after one evening without him coming into their room to sleep, Raven goes out into the Camp way past midnight to look for him, stumbling over a few roots and branches and cursing in languages long pronounced dead. With the noise she makes, he finds her first. 

Face to face in the dark, with just moonlight and a far-off torch illuminating their faces, she thinks he looks more stern than he actually is. All edges, all angry, all broody and dark and unlike him. Who even sees him like this, she wonders, indignant. Who even thinks that Bellamy Blake is anything but kind, and gentle, and a little bit lost? She feels a rush of _some feeling_  that have her taking a step forward and opening her mouth first.

“I’m sorry about all the shit I said,” she says, and she is, she really is. (At one point, she even threw Clarke’s name in there, and it makes her sick to be like this, why is she like this?) He doesn’t answer, so she goes on, “Listen, I know I’m the worst person to be around right now, because I aim low and I’m just - I’m a bitch, I know.”

“You’re not,” he interjects, softly.

“Yeah, everyone says it, and after all that mess I’m inclined to agree. I’m a cold asshole who pushes people away, and I - with you, I guess I decided that wasn’t enough, I’d make you bitter towards me to boot.”

He steps closer now, so he can keep his voice steady and low. “Why did you?”

Why did she snap? Why did she try to push him away? She doesn’t know. Truth be told, she doesn’t even remember half the things she’d said, and that’s the worst part. She can’t be trusted to keep a friendship anymore, it seems, because she’ll fuck it up. In her struggle to find him a suitable answer, she ends up looking down at the ground, disappointed at herself. Under her boot, there's the first sapling of a flower, green signalling the arrival of spring and the end of their agreement.  _Ah. That part._

"It's easier to push people away than to watch them leave you," she finally murmurs, to her boots more than to him. When you let them leave you, you're left with the scars. When you shove them out of your life, you recover faster. Bellamy - well - she'd need a long time, by now, if she had to watch him leave her behind. 

The unexpected thing isn't that he'd care, it's that he reaches out and and cups her cheek, making her tilt her head back to look up at him. She's confronted with a lot of things: the dark, warm brown of his eyes, the freckles on his nose, the way his lips always look so kissable, and the kindness of him, leaving her hungry for it, starved for it. His lips move, he speaks: "I wasn't thinking of leaving." 

Oh. "Oh?"

"You're the one who threw it in my face," he says. Conflicting with the way he brushes his thumb over her cheekbone, like he's a little starved, too. 

"But winter's over."

"Guess it is." So they don't  _need_ to keep bunking together, per se. Shit, they don't even need to share the same bed during the coldest nights, for body warmth. No more excuses for a cuddle now, no more pretexts to hide behind for her. "I won't be able to sleep well without your snoring, though." 

That prompts a smile out of her. She doesn't snore that badly. "Yeah, I wouldn't be able to fall asleep so fast without your shoes stinking up the room..." 

"And I do care about you being able to sleep," he points out, smiling down at her in return, and bringing his free hand up to sink his fingers into his hair.  _Oh,_ she realizes,  _oh._  

"I'd feel bad knowing I'm the cause of you not resting well anymore too." 

He lets out a soft laugh and leans in, and she thinks  _oh god, he's going to kiss me_ , and she closes her eyes for it, leans into it like some teenager with her heart beating fast and loud in her chest, like a war drum. He presses his forehead against hers instead. "I like being your roommate, Raven," he whispers, making her open her eyes again. 

"Yeah," she exhales, "me too." 

"You like being your roommate, too?"

She shoves at him. "You're such a fucking clown." 

He dodges her shove, and ruffles her hair instead, making her scrunch her nose with displeasure. In a second, she barely sees it coming, he leans in and kisses her soundly on the lips, a soft peck, gone before she can even assimilate it. It has her gaping like a fish on dry land for a second; his hand slips down into hers, their fingers intertwined, and she snaps her mouth shut.  _Oh._  

She squeezes his fingers, and tugs him back to the Ark ruins, back to their quarters, which have been empty long enough, which have been lonely long enough, which are too warm and kind and generous to be given up on easily. (The quarters, yes.) Time to go back. 

"I guess we're gonna need a bigger bed." 


End file.
